


you fit into me like

by Sanetwin



Series: AU: all those gears and arteries [4]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-20 14:33:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8252666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanetwin/pseuds/Sanetwin
Summary: What has one eye but cannot see?A needle.





	

**Author's Note:**

> **For Helena:**  
>  Blind loving wrestling touch, sheath'd hooded sharp-tooth'd  
> touch!  
> Did it make you ache so, leaving me?  
> ...  
> I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,  
> If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
> 
> You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,  
> But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,  
> And filter and fibre your blood.
> 
>  **For Rachel:**  
>  And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God,  
> For I who am curious about each am not curious about  
> God,  
> (No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about  
> God and about death.)
> 
> I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God  
> not in the least,  
> Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than  
> myself.  
> \-- **Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" from his collection of poems, _Leaves of Grass_**

_What has one eye but cannot see?_

Riddles were shared every morning to stimulate the reasoning engine in Helena’s hardwiring, which needed a good thrashing anyway. It tempered her, softened her edges, as air did cool the blush of molten glass. When Sarah had first started this routine, she researched a couple mind games—paradoxes, jokes, sophisms, illusions, among others. Silly as she felt at the time, it turned out that Helena would need a distraction for the walk home. So it continued. At 6:30 AM, Sarah and Helena would leave the apartment they shared with Felix for the transit, take a train to the western part of downtown, and walk to their favorite bench in High State Park, which could be reached by 7 AM with a brisk pace and some encouraging from Sarah.

For most of her life, Sarah had scoffed at the morning dwellers for their fake happiness and empty obligations. No one was _really_ a morning person. It was ridiculous that anyone would trick themselves into thinking they were. You were either a night person or you were the miserable sod with responsibilities that compelled them to get up in the morning. Finding the sunrise beautiful and the morning-quiet peaceful were simply ways the brain coped with the fact that it was rudely shunted from a dream. Now she was forced to cohabitate with these people.

When their train had stopped at a station before the one she and Helena would get off at, there was a pleasant sound of shoes scuffing against the floor as people either entered or left the train.  In this silence, a man at the opposite end of the aisle leaned over his knees and spoke to them, lifting his thermos of coffee, to say: “ _Don’t let anyone talk to me before I’ve finished this_ ,” and laughed.

This was her life now. She had become a morning person. Although she disguised herself with clothes of the night (a black lattice crop top and skinny jeans always left a nice impression), making it seem as though she were coming home from a club, the morning people’s miserable, sober eyes were trained to recognize each other. They could see her companion sitting beside her, bundled in a heavy jacket and watching the passengers with excessive attention. They could smell the sense of responsibility to her on Sarah.

Rolling her eyes, she shouldered Helena and said loud enough for the man to hear: “If I ever start talking like that, put me down.” The man’s expression became cinched with the polite resignation of someone who was pretending not to listen, but he recoiled from them and sat with his shoulders curled inward and his thermos leaking on his lap.

Of course, Sarah had to listen to Helena’s concerned babbling until they reached the bench, so there were no winners, really.  

“I would never kill you, Sarah,” Helena said repeatedly. “Don’t ask me to do it because I won’t.”

Since Helena had no organic method of coping with unpleasant thoughts, she became intolerable until she was distracted by something. While human brains had myriad ways of managing stress and ordering threats from “HIGH RISK” to “You probably misunderstood what she meant, of course Sarah didn’t actually want you to kill her,” Helena was forced to deal with unpleasantness with an all-or-nothing tactic. Although she had gotten much better at impulse-control, her brain often needed a sort of restart to give her the time and space away from the issue to decipher it.

Of course, an in-built restart had been conveniently made for this exact purpose, but Sarah had no idea how to put her into PowerSave and Helena didn’t remember the phrase that would prompt it, so that was ruled out. Hence the routine.

Once she reached the bench, a sort of muscle memory prompted her to be quiet, sit down, and listen for whatever brain teaser Sarah had prepared for that day. Whatever had upset her was kicked to the back of her mind.

Their favorite bench faced Grenadier pond, where the ducks would paddle and flip in warmer weather. Overnight, the pond developed a rind of translucent ice that would usually melt off by morning, but the days were becoming shorter and colder, making the ice thicker. Soon the ducks would begin their migration and Sarah and Helena, too, would have to circle the park for a more insulated bench. Sometimes it drove her mad to think about. In a couple weeks, the birds would hemorrhage from the city in singing droves, but the most Sarah would have moved was from a bench by the pond to another bench, probably near some trees.

Felix thought it was good for her. Sometimes people needed to be forced still in order to take in the world around them. No one was laying cement over her. Her body wasn’t a rooted trunk sketched with the initials of lovers long separated.

 _Have you ever wondered why you came up with this routine?_ He’d asked one night as they were sharing a celebratory bottle of whiskey. She wished she could remember what it was they toasted, so rarely did they do anything worth congratulating.

 _Helena benefits from it. That’s all. She’s unmanageable without it, you know that._ She’d said _._

_If that were all, I’d put her down for you. But I don’t think you believe that._

Sarah had scoffed, taking a sip from the bottle, and said nothing. It made her uneasy whenever he mentioned killing Helena. The concept had become a carnivalesque topic for them, entwined with the morbid and the familiar, like eating cake at a funeral. She’d learned not to press him further. At this time, they were still making challenges, although they’d soon learn of their destructive nature. It was common to hear such things like: If Helena can’t hold conversation with a stranger by the end of the month, we should put her down. It was just short of saying ‘I double-dog dare you.’ As always, the deadlines were postponed until the challenges themselves became arbitrary, and eventually, they were stopped altogether. But the thought was still there, ever-present, a knife behind the curtain. Helena’s fate was in their hands.

The last challenge they’d ever made was a week or two after that whiskey-imbued night. Felix had said it jokingly because Sarah was complaining about the routine again, but he’d rescinded it almost at once. Still, Sarah had accepted it. The challenge was this: When you run out of riddles, then we’ll put her down.

 _Fine_ , she’d snapped. _But if I run out of material, you have to be the one to tell Helena_.

_Why do we have to tell her at all?_

_Because we aren’t animals, Fee!_

In all honesty, most of the challenges were accepted like that, which was why this was their last one.

Luckily, there was no need to prepare a new riddle for Helena every day. In fact, she would only ever need one. Not even a clever riddle at that—just something short and pithy, easy to remember. As it turned out, Helena could chew on the same riddle for the better part of an hour and still not reach its marrow. Once they were home and every word had been gnawed, swallowed, and regurgitated, Sarah would give her the answer. Rinse and repeat. The next day, Helena wouldn’t be able to produce an answer for that very same riddle they’d carved together.

For once, memory wasn’t the issue. Nor was it impotence. In fact, Helena was resourceful in the way she approached the answer, making creative associations each day. More likely, whatever reasoning engine DYAD had set in place for her had short-circuited or was simply obsolete by now. Rachel, no doubt, was made of the good stuff.

For this reason (and that other thing), Sarah ensured that Rachel was removed from their morning route for as long as possible. It was hopeless, really, since the android had been approved by the Board of Ethics and Other Bullshit, whose members were serendipitously appointed by Topside, and was therefore _everywhere._ Now she was more than just a prototype—Rachel was commercial, industrial even, although she was mainly exported internationally. No one here was affluent enough to afford such a novelty model. Whatever improvements DYAD had given her had passed the test. It was difficult to know how her brain worked exactly because all the demonstrations were riddled with buzz words like “Holistic,” “Adaptive cognition,” and “Memory graph,” which were really only husks of the truth.  

While Rachel could recall falsified memories about jumping on webbed kelp beds in the idyllic coast of England, Helena had failed to recognize herself in the mirror. This was discovered almost immediately after bringing Helena home from the Prolethean farm. Sarah could still see her face. Her eyes had grown wild, her lips peeled back, and a feral chuffing sound escaped her as she confronted her reflection as though it were an enemy. Felix had to hide whatever mirrors remained while Sarah kept Helena’s head bent forward and covered with a burlap bag.

Right now Helena was circling around a word she knew was the correct answer (because Sarah told her it was _yesterday_ ), but she wouldn’t bring herself to say it aloud because she couldn’t believe it was the right answer. It was impossible. She couldn’t find the logic in it. As infuriating as that was for Sarah, there was no denying that the riddle worked her brain just as well now as it had the first time she heard it.

After a few attempts at solving the riddle on her own, Sarah would walk her through it hand-in-hand during their return trip to the apartment. This was toward the end of the routine. The final part was once they were back in the apartment, when Helena’s mind was allowed to wander at last. Let off leash, if you will. Most of the time she prayed, but sometimes she was fascinated by some stray stimuli she’d discovered at some point on their routine (usually it was something grotesque, like a dribble of snot hardening in the column of an upper lip, but not always). After all, that was the incentive for Helena: If she could _behave_ on her way to and from their bench in High Park then her brain was allowed to turn and flip in whatever recursive circles that pleased her. This usually led to scratched drawings and antic psalms embalmed on the wall. If she didn’t behave then Sarah would have to come up with more material to keep her occupied. Puzzles were the worst. Television was out of the question—too much risk of seeing Rachel.

Today, the morning emerged tethered by ribbons of gold and pink, perhaps a little colder than the day before but otherwise identical. Sarah and Helena eavesdropped on two mallards as they bobbed in the water, wetting their bills, and shaking the water from their colorful coats.

“Okay Helena, you have to say something,” Sarah said. “Do you need me to repeat it?”

“What has one eye but cannot see? I can remember some things _,_ Sarah _.”_

She smiled at the attitude. Helena could be so grumpy sometimes. It’s not like she had any reason to be, she wasn’t missing sleep by coming out here, anyway. Sarah liked to think it was a positive sign, like watching your child slump into the tanbark at the playground. Maybe she’d have some time for herself this evening.

“Come on then, Gearhead, out with it.”

“You are rushing me.”

Sarah laughed. “You’d stay out ‘til dark if I didn’t.”

After a minute, Helena’s expression settled on something like ingenuity. Silently, she pointed to a billboard that stood on the other side of the duck pond, where a single eye stared out at them. Its brown iris was blown back against the white and was embossed with a subtle sunflower design that might have looked natural if not for the glint of green patina over copper, coloring the intricate petals of the iris. It was artificial. Embossed across the top were the words: SEE LIKE RACHEL.

“One eye that cannot see,” Helena said.

The eye stared out at them with subtle inflection, as though it were waiting for them to speak first. Sarah watched Helena’s face for signs of agitation, but couldn’t seem to find any. There was only an air of self-satisfaction, of having solved the riddle correctly. She wanted to explain why she was still wrong, but realized that she needed to tread lightly around Rachel. Helena’s calm was as thin as the ice over the duck pond. There was no telling what dark impulses might break through.

After a moment, Helena tipped her head back and laughed. Her hand cupped her chest as though it were trying to coax out her heart while her voice leaped and scratched like an antique gramophone.  

Her voice was honey smooth, liquor sweet. She gave Sarah a sly look: “You were joking earlier, on the train.”

Rolling her eyes, Sarah got up from the bench.

“Come on.”

* * *

 

By the time they made it back downtown, it was 8AM and people were beginning to amble their way out of their houses and around the city. Everything was louder and brighter. The sidewalk bustled with corner markets and the streets were filled with cars and buses trying to weave around each other. Helena slowed to a meandering pace, distracted by all the different smells and city sights. When it got to the point that Sarah was walking a full yard ahead of Helena, she stopped and waited for her to catch up. But Helena had stopped too. A full block back now, she leaned against the stairs leading to the underground transit station and gave a plaintive look to Sarah.

 _Now you don’t mind the separation_ , she thought. Rolling the hood over her head, she returned to Helena, like a lure to its pole.

The voices underground were muffled and distorted, calling to them alluringly.

“Absolutely not. We’re walking back.”

“I have no strength,” Helena said, shutting her eyes.

“Yes, you do.”  

Helena cast a longing look down the cavernous stairway and then squinted back at Sarah. Her face looked truly pitiful. It was difficult to tell whether this behavior was designed or genuine, or whether there was really a difference between the two, but it was convincing. Huffing, she reached for the back of Helena’s parka and pulled the hoodie over her head. She looked more threatening like this, standing stock still with her shoulders leaning forward at a slight angle as though gravity were lulling her to the floor. Then Sarah pulled out two pairs of sunglasses and put them on.

“Don’t get seen.” 

Putting on the sunglasses, Helena stared blankly down the corridor.

“I am invisible,” she said gravely.

 

The passenger car was riddled with androids. Most of them were from recognizably earlier generations, but with some obvious and recent improvements. DYAD had recalled all of the surviving older-generation A.I. and everyone had imagined that their beloved bots were all now embedded in the scrapyard. But only a couple weeks later, they were all returned to their previous owners with newer parts and a fresh stamp. DYAD’s explanation was enigmatic as always, but their claim was that they wished to improve the older androids’ hardwiring, give them a more sustainable memory, and a reliable mind. Sarah didn’t get it. What happened to planned obsolesce? If Rachel was as successful as DYAD was making her out to be, why wouldn’t the older generations be culled?

One model, BETH, was an old animatronic android with limited features and human capability, but was considered a reliable security system and guardian. They were most often used by older people who didn’t always remember to lock their doors, or sometimes forgot the way back home. Topside’s stamp of approval lay prominently upon BETH’s body. It was a small circular image of a neuron alongside the words: _CLOUD ANIMUS_. Their painted eyes glowed faintly while their head pivoted on a swivel neck. BETH stared at Sarah and then at Helena, who was still maintaining her cover as ‘invisible thing.’ Sarah glared back. _Keep on looking, tin can_.

When the train stopped at the next station, most of the passengers left the car, except the BETH bot. Sarah patted Helena’s thigh comfortingly, unsure of whether she was as aware of being watched as Sarah was.

“Still invisible?” Sarah asked.

“That _thing_ is watching us,” Helena said. Her shoulders curled inward, becoming smaller.

Damn it.

“It’s probably nothing,” Sarah said.

“Do you want me to ‘take care of it’?” Helena asked, turning to face her.

Sarah bit her lip. It truly frightened her how much Helena learned from background noise, such as simply being in the same room as a movie that played in the background. She was becoming a Godfather, and not of the sort who sends nifty Christmas gifts.

“It’s an old android—the poor thing probably just doesn’t know where else to look.”

Helena’s face hardened behind her sunglasses. A dark cloud had swelled over her mind. She wanted to soothe Helena, but didn’t want to give her any note of suppressed stress, so she remained silent.

 _Tender your bones_ , _girl_ , she thought, like Siobhan used to sing to her, when she was still young enough to be sung to. _Make them kind_.

The break from routine was almost blissful. It was an erratic, torn feeling for Sarah and Helena and their practiced routine. Unease lay like a spot in their periphery, but they still felt amiable enough to enjoy the way their limbs eased into the sun-warmed leather. They were beginning to learn the thrill of a morning high; soon their tongues would unconsciously pick up the lines of other morning people.

Here’s what they couldn’t see: A catacomb of rooms buried beneath DYAD. The center room had a steel door and was labelled: CLOUD ANIMUS. There is nothing special about the room’s appearance, it looks identical to the empty rooms stationed beside and above it. However, behind its walls, there lay a sort of infinity. It acted as a repository of sorts—for the cosmic span of the universe, maybe, or for every inch and measure of the human brain.

That was the room where Rachel watched them. Her own eyes were bare and dull, resembling boiled yolks more than anything; not that she had any use for them, for there was little to see except the white walls and blinking lights. In fact, her individual world didn’t stretch much further than Level 0—occasionally she was allowed upstairs, but there was little use for her there. This, she had learned to find empowering, beautiful even. For her purpose stretched beyond the lives of most humans. She alone had access to CLOUD ANIMUS. She alone knew how to harness it. And with it, she had seen Paris, Taiwan, Japan, and Sarah. She watched Sarah most often, and all the different ways she foiled her freedom.

Then she saw Sarah’s android—that strange pet she kept around, the broken rogue she’d heard so much about. Helena looked at her. Her eyes cut straight through the yellow plastic of BETH’s eyes and saw Rachel—even watched as Rachel watched her.

 

“ _Helena, stop it!”_

“You are a safety risk,” BETH said. “All unregistered androids are to be taken to DYAD.”

“Needle eyes cannot see. But real eyes need needles to be blind,” Helena said, rapping a finger against the plastic of their painted eyes. “Do you want to know if your eyes are needle or not?”

“Get that _thing_ off my service bot!” An older woman cried. Her hands were clenched in her lap, trembling from the knuckled force of her fists. BETH still held the woman’s groceries in their hands, although Helena’s play was becoming more violent.

Sarah stood uncertainly a few feet away. She hadn’t anticipated a situation where Helena ignored her commands. By the manner Helena had taken with her lately, she’d begun to think Helena couldn’t ignore commands.

“Helena,” Sarah said, more slowly now. “Come here. _Now_.”

Her shoulders stiffened slightly and she turned around. Sarah pointed to the seat beside her.

Helena followed the direction of Sarah’s finger and lowered her head slightly. Her hand lay gently curled around BETH’s cylinder neck.

“Okay, Sarah,” Helena said, turning back to BETH.

“Unsafe conditions,” BETH tittered. “Everyone stay seated.”

BETH looked into Helena’s eyes. Everything after that was a bit of a blur. It all went so fast. Sarah could hardly remember what happened. One moment, BETH was standing before them, gently cautious, and then she was on the floor. Parts of her eyes had been torn out and her throat was jagged and open. Helena’s hands had snapped around her neck like the iron bar of a mouse trap.  

Then they were off. Sarah grabbed Helena’s hand and shoved her through the doors of the next passenger car. Behind her, the blue jay cries of the older woman lifted above the noise of the engine, lamenting the life of her companion; her daughter. Sarah convinced herself that DYAD would return the android to her, that it wouldn’t at all be like getting a new child to replace the one that’d grown still in the night. Programming could be replicated. Data was never lost. Soon, it would be like she hadn’t lost BETH at all.

No matter which track her thoughts took, her heart was bruised purple with shame. Guilt flooded the shallow pool of her mouth. She felt like crying.

When they left the train, every android in the station was looking at them. Her mind bloomed with images of an ambush, but there was nothing of the sort. Instead, they were suspended like fish caught beneath ice. Their eyes followed Sarah and Helena as they walked stiffly up the stairs and went above ground. Their eyes said—we see you, we watch, we know.

Managing to weave through the bodies of watching androids, Sarah found an abandoned alleyway. Her socks were soaked with sewage and her boots scuffed against shards of glass and hypodermic needles. Helena touched Sarah’s shoulder.

“Thank you for bringing me here,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”

Sarah shoved Helena away with trembling fingers.

“Don’t touch me,” she snapped. She remembered the way the older woman had shrieked, seeing Helena for the monster she was. Thoughts raced her mind. Had there been any point to their routine? Where had she failed? The most prominent of which rung in her mind _: We can’t go home._

She couldn’t risk leading the androids back to Felix, but grieved the thought of leaving him without saying goodbye. Could they risk staying in the city? DYAD would find them eventually, if only to file an insurance claim, but something told her that it’d never be quite so simple. If there were ever a world where the rogue android could be peacefully ignored, it was gone now.

Strangely enough, she and Felix had never devised a plan for this: _If Helena becomes violent toward innocent lives, we put her down_.

“You don’t understand. It was looking at you like you were…,” Helena circled a word she would never find. Perhaps there wasn’t a word to describe the level of heresy that existed in Helena’s mind. BETH had not marveled at Sarah. That was the cause of their death.  

Suddenly, she knew where they needed to go. To the woman who could slap and pinch the feral out of any pup she took in. The same place where her daughter now stayed, forgetting her slowly. She looked at Helena. There’s no way she’d bring Helena to Kira, but she could find a place nearby, somewhere accessible.

 

* * *

 

When Siobhan opened the door, she saw a sharp-angled young man with jaunty lips. He pulled the handles of his handbag up his shoulders and pushed his hips out expressively.

“Siobhan?” he asked, holding out his hand.

She pursed her lips and stared at his outstretched hand. He stared at it too, and then retracted it slowly.

“Right,” he said and then clapped his hands together, “Anyways! Sarah needs your help.”

**Author's Note:**

> You fit into me  
> like a hook into an eye  
> A fish hook  
> An open eye  
> \-- **Margaret Atwood, "You Fit Into Me"**


End file.
